Watchdog: Election board members may have broken law with legal filing

A government watchdog group is claiming that three Republican members of the State Election Board may have violated Georgia sunshine laws by submitting a legal filing supporting the affidavit used to justify the January raid in Fulton County, where the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records.

The left-leaning group American Oversight sent a letter to the State Election Board Tuesday, raising concerns that the three board members collaborated on the letter in private and without input from the board’s chairman and its sole Democrat.

“Georgians have a right to know how decisions related to their elections are being made,” Liz Hempowicz, deputy executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement. “This is not the first time we’ve had to remind members of the State Election Board that those decisions must be made according to a specific legal process.”

American Oversight said that the filing gives the appearance that support for the raid is a policy position of the board.

The document — known as an amicus brief — was filed in a lawsuit brought by Fulton County against the U.S. Department of Justice following the raid in which Fulton County is demanding the ballots and other materials be returned. Several current and former local election officials joined the brief, including two former Fulton election board members.

An email obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows that at least one state board member not named in the brief was informed of the filing a day after it was submitted to the court.

“Please see the attached,” wrote State Election Board Vice Chair Janice Johnston, a Georgia Republican Party appointee.

Board members Johnston, Salleigh Grubbs and Janelle King submitted the brief in federal district court of Atlanta in late March along with other current and former election officials.

“American Oversight to me is just a bunch of lawfare lynching,” King said in response to the letter.

King said Johnston called her to see if she wanted to support the filing. She said she wasn’t sure whether others were aware of the filing beforehand. King rejected the idea that the three met without the other members.

“There is no concocting of a plan together as the three of us,” she said.

Johnston did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Grubbs said she could not immediately respond, citing a busy schedule.

King and Johnston, who were once praised by President Donald Trump as “pit bulls,” were cited as key witnesses in the FBI’s affidavit justifying the Trump administration’s seizure of reams of 2020 election records in late January. Trump has never accepted his 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden, and he and his allies have accused Fulton of wrongdoing during the election for years.

FBI agents appear at Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, as the FBI conducts a raid. (Arvin Temkar/AJC)

Both Johnston and King have been part of the board’s dogged effort to further investigate Fulton’s long-scrutinized election. The board has issued multiple subpoenas for Fulton 2020 election records and has sought help from the Justice Department.

The brief argued that state and local officials have obstructed investigations into alleged “irregularities.”

“Petitioners have failed to fulfil(l) their duties for the proper care and custody of, and access to, the public records in this case and have intentionally obfuscated issues by claiming spurious privacy issues, asserting dictatorial claims of unaccountability, and needlessly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds to avoid accountability,” the brief reads.